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Coin Collecting For Dummies. Neil S. BermanЧитать онлайн книгу.

Coin Collecting For Dummies - Neil S. Berman


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the rolls, and pulled out all the old coins we could find. Then, fill the rolls with replacement coins, and run back inside to the teller, and swapped the picked-over rolls for new ones, repeating the process until they ran out of money or time. At the end of the morning, we would have piles of Indian-head cents, buffalo nickels, Mercury dimes, Standing Liberty quarters, Walking Liberty half dollars, and plenty of the more modern silver coins that had been discontinued a few years earlier. We spent the next week trading our treasures with other kids, and even sold some of the coins to local coin dealers — at a profit. We were budding tycoons having lots of fun.

      Sadly, since the late 1980s, kids would be wasting their time trying to find anything rare or unusual in change. Occasionally, a Wheatie (the Lincoln cent with wheat ears on the back, struck before 1959) shows up, but all the silver coins have disappeared, and the modern-clad coins have huge mintages and no collector value. No wonder kids have migrated away from coins to baseball cards, and other collectibles.

      Past programs like the 50 State Quarters and Sacagawea Dollars brought many new people into the hobby of coin collecting. Here are a couple of the reasons why people got getting excited about coin collecting again.

      50 State Quarters

Photo depicts the 1999 Delaware Quarter — first of the 50 State Quarters.

      Sacagawea dollar

Photo depicts the 2000 Sacagawea dollar.

      FIGURE 2-5: The 2000 Sacagawea dollar.

      The public gobbled up these coins like crazy and locked them away in their sock drawers and safe-deposit boxes. Many of these hoarders have discovered the joys of numismatics and are now actively involved in collecting other coins as well.

      New commemorative issues

      Error coins

      We give the U.S. Mint a lot of credit for a job well done. It reintroduced the Susan B. Anthony dollar, created and marketed the incredibly popular Sacagawea dollar, came up with 40 new quarter dollar designs in eight years, and worked around the clock to strike billions and billions of coins so that we can go out and spend them. As coin collectors and dealers, we owe a debt of gratitude to the U.S. Mint for doing something I’ve been trying to do for decades: getting people interested in numismatics.

      I don’t say that mints are perfect. In fact, I acknowledge that the U.S. Mint is far from perfect. But as far as numismatics goes, imperfection is a good thing. Few industries have product lines in which the rejected items are more valuable than the perfect ones. Bad light bulbs get thrown away, imperfect clothing is sold as seconds, and defective washing machines sell in classified ads. None of them fetches a premium — certainly not the tens of thousands of dollars that some coin errors have brought.

      In 2000, several spectacular error coins stunned the numismatic world. One such error was a coin with the front of a 50 State Quarter and the back of a Sacagawea dollar — the first U.S. coin ever to bear two denominations. Because the two dies differ in diameter, no one believed that it was possible for such an error to exist; in fact, some professionals believe that these error coins were made deliberately. The error received tremendous publicity in the national media, causing millions of noncollectors to begin examining their change. You can bet that many of them have become coin collectors.

      Error coins not only capture the essence of the manufacturing process but also one’s curiousity. More recently, an error on the strike of Lincoln Presidental Dollars omitted some edge lettering, which catapulted this coin to sell for as much as $500, depending on condition.

      The Fred Weingberg Collection, known as one of the greatest modern day collections of U.S. mint errors, highlights a 2000-P Sacagawea dollar/Washington Quarter mule — one of the rarest mint errors — and a 1880-S Morgan dollar, graded MS63 by PCGS and struck 40 percent off center. Both of these coveted mint error coins are expected to capture a premium sum at a Heritage Auction in 2022.

      Arming Yourself with Knowledge

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Researching coins

      

Determining a coin’s value

      

Collecting what interests you

      On one hand, becoming a coin collector is easy. On the other hand, becoming a good collector requires some effort and planning. New collectors are often overwhelmed by language they’ve never heard before, concerns about counterfeit coins, grading issues, and so on. Unfortunately, there’s no Coin Collecting University … unless you count the School of Hard Knocks, where the tuition can be high and the classes are really tough. But you can study on your own and become quite knowledgeable in your


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